EDITORIAL: University of Alabama football doesn’t need to claim 1941 title

Sunday

Jan 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM

After the University of Alabama football teams’s 42-14 victory in the BCS National Championship Game, no one was too concerned when one of the computer rankings used to determine the BCS Championship Game participants still had Notre Dame ranked No. 1. However, it did lead one smart-alecky tweeter to quip that by Alabama standards, that would qualify as a national championship.

After the University of Alabama football teams’s 42-14 victory in the BCS National Championship Game, no one was too concerned when one of the computer rankings used to determine the BCS Championship Game participants still had Notre Dame ranked No. 1. However, it did lead one smart-alecky tweeter to quip that by Alabama standards, that would qualify as a national championship.No less than our own Cecil Hurt lamented that the 1941 “National Championship” had struck again. Hurt isn’t the only one to take note that the ’41 “title” has been used to delegitimize all of the championships claimed prior to 1936, when the Associated Press began ranking teams and awarding national championships.Fans of some other teams have virtually made careers of nitpicking Alabama’s football championships. That’s OK, because one of college football’s great virtues is the endless argument it spawns over who is best in a sport without a playoff where head-to-head comparisons aren’t always possible.But regarding the 1941 championship, they have a point. It was a year in which Alabama lost to Vanderbilt and Mississippi State (both strong teams that year) and finished third in the SEC. Ending the season with a Cotton Bowl victory over Texas A&M, Alabama had a good year. But was it really a championship year?The 1941 title was added to the Crimson Tide’s long list of championships in the early 1980s when former UA Sports Information Director Wayne Atcheson discovered that it had been awarded to Alabama by the Houlgate System. It was an obscure fact that would better have been left lost in the jungle of archaic sports trivia.UA’s football program also claims four other national championships in the pre-1936 era — 1925, 1926, 1930 and 1934. All four were undefeated teams and Rose Bowl champions (co-champions in the case of the 1926 team, which tied Stanford in Pasadena that year). In other words, they went undefeated and won the year’s biggest football game.Their claim to a national championship in those four years is as legitimate as any team’s. But because those four championships occurred in an era before a universally recognized championship, Alabama’s detractors use the dubious 1941 title to discredit all of them.Some Alabama fans oppose dropping the 1941 title on the grounds that it makes up for championships the Crimson Tide should have been awarded. Few Alabama fans would argue that the Crimson Tide has a legitimate beef over its treatment in 1945, 1966 and 1977. But it’s not like UA is looking for hardware to fill the shelves in its trophy case.Alabama has more national championships in the post-1936 era, 10, than any other team. Its three BCS National Championships are more than any other team. Continuing to claim 1941 merely taints its otherwise incomparable record.We hope the athletic department will choose to ditch it and be content with 14.

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